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Contents are grouped under the headings: Theory and method; The New World; Europe; The Near and Far East.

Analyzes the British approach to comparative research; based on a survey of major journals and books published in the 1970s and 1980s.

WE HAVE ENTERED UPON A NEW STAGE IN POLITICAL SCIENCE as well as in the study of world affairs, the stage of large-scale computer-based world models. These models became practicable because of three changes. First, thanks to the United Nations and many national governments, many more better quality statistical data have now become available. Secondly, because of the techniques of sampling and of interviewing, we now can have survey data from very many countries and groups of people. These survey data cover many different aspects of people's views and attitudes, or of their experiences, or of their reports of what they thought they did. We can then compare the number of people who say they have written a letter with the number of letters the post office says they sent or got; thus we can, as it were, cross-examine the statistical data critically. Thirdly, we now have large computers which can store, recall, tabulate and analyze large amounts of data, if somebody works out a suitable programme for them. The computers can then tirelessly and patiently do work in minutes which individuals could not have achieved in a lifetime. Thanks to these advances in the last twenty or thirty years–the greater availability of statistics, survey and sampling techniques, and computers–we now have world models.

Political science: the discipline / Robert E. Goodin and Hans-Dieter Klingemann -- Political science: the history of the discipline / Gabriel A. Almond -- Political science and the other social sciences / Mattei Dogan -- Political institutions: an overview / Bo Rothstein -- Political institutions: rational choice perspectives / Barry R. Weingast -- Political institutions: legal perspectives / Gavin Drewry -- Political institutions, old and new / B. Guy Peters -- Political behavior: an overview / Edward G. Carmines and Robert Huckfeldt -- Political behavior: reasoning voters and multi-party systems / Franz Urban Pappi -- Political behavior: institutional and experiential approaches / Patrick Dunleavy -- Political behavior, old and new / Warren E. Miller -- Comparative politics: an overview / Peter Mair -- Comparative politics: micro-behavioral perspectives / Russell J. Dalton -- Comparative politics: democratization studies / Laurence Whitehead -- Comparative politics, old and new / David E. Apter -- International relations: an overview / Kjell Goldmann -- International relations: neo-realism and neo-liberalism / David Sanders -- International relations: post-positivist and feminist perspectives / J. Ann Tickner -- International relations, old and new / Robert O. Keohane -- Political theory: an overview / Iris Marion Young -- Political theory: traditions in political philosophy / Bhikhu Parekh -- Political theory: empirical political theory / Klaus von Beyme -- Political theory, old and new / Brian Barry -- Public policy and administration: an overview /Barbara J. Nelson -- Public policy and administration: comparative policy analysis / Richard I. Hofferbert and David Louis Cingranelli -- Public policy and administration: ideas, interests and institutions / Giandomenico Majone -- Public policy and administration, old and new / B. Guy Peters and Vincent Wright -- Political economy: an overview / James E. Alt and Alberto Alesina -- Political economy: sociological perspectives / Claus Offe -- Political economy: Downsian perspectives / Bernard Grofman -- Political economy, old and new / A.B. Atkinson -- Political methodology: an overview / John E. Jackson -- Political methodology: qualitative methods / Charles C. Ragin, Dirk Berg-Schlosser and Gisele de Meur -- Political methodology: research design and experimental methods / Kathleen McGraw -- Political methodology, old and new / Hayward R. Alker